The dead are unquiet and the living are terrified in The Road, a powerfully atmospheric blend of ghostly encounters, horrific situations and missing-persons mysteries from the Philippine director Yam Laranas.

The film's three-pronged narrative does a fair job of laying a spooky groundwork for the revelatory emotional sadism that lies behind most acts of evil; it just takes a bit of clunky exposition to get there.

Yam Laranas doesn't leave it at that. In his low-budget, creepy thriller, he spells out why and how this particular path is so deadly, as well as what led to the crimes and supernatural horror that seem to frequent the place.

This low-budget shocker eventually pays off, displaying just enough narrative ingenuity to compensate for a cinematically crude and logistically sketchy deployment of the requisite blood-and-guts mayhem.

I'm not sure I understand what all the hype is around this movie. It was mildly entertaining, but if there is anyone that was truly surprisedI'm not sure I understand what all the hype is around this movie. It was mildly entertaining, but if there is anyone that was truly surprised by the ending, I'd have your head checked. My wife and I figured it out by the end of Part II and honestly didn't find the scare tactics all that original. Check it out if you want, but don't go expecting the next Cabin in the Woods or Hostel.…Full Review »

Filipino director Yam Laranas mixes atmospheric terror with outright shocks in his latest feature, THE ROAD. An unsolved missing persons caseFilipino director Yam Laranas mixes atmospheric terror with outright shocks in his latest feature, THE ROAD. An unsolved missing persons case is re-opened when three teens disappear off of the same fateful road twelve years later. What the police will discover is more horrifying than anyone could have imagined, with a string of deaths spanning over two decades! Once Laranas has established his dark, oppressive mood, he never lets up, and follows through with a steady stream of haunting images that will chill you to the bone. The story unfolds in three seemingly unrelated stories, which have been carefully tied together in the end to reveal the sinister secret behind each of the mysterious deaths. Laranas takes a timely approach in introducing each new set of characters, allowing his talented cast to bond with the audience before they meet their inevitable demise. The end result is a well-told ghost story that easily stacks up against its Japanese equivalents JU-ON and RINGU in the terror department.…Full Review »

The Year of the horror films, The Innkeepers, The Cabin in the Woods, and The Woman in Black and now the Road, other classic of the horrorThe Year of the horror films, The Innkeepers, The Cabin in the Woods, and The Woman in Black and now the Road, other classic of the horror movies. The trama is really interesting, the development is great, this movie is incredible.…Full Review »